Dadr'Ba (38 page)

Chn’Gi, lay naked in the hot water of her bathtub enjoying the luxury of her status, at most five percent of the population of Dadr’Ba has a tub large enough to lay full-length. Most U’Te’s and Dr’T’s have to settle for a shower on an automatic timer or a shallow sit bath or go to one of the public baths.

The reading light on the nearby counter became her friend.

She didn’t like it at first, it gave off an eerie blue-green shimmer producing a scary effect. If she scanned her eyes across it, it causes a dizzying flickering effect. The only way to avoid the weird effect was not to look directly at it or to blink your eyes hard before scanning away. Now that Chn’Gi has grown accustomed to it, it’s a companion, and its light has become a warm glow, providing her a sense of security.

The mechanism behind its operation must be unique, the CASS must know about them and would recognize it immediately. Fortunately, the CASS doesn’t surveilled bathrooms, at least not at her security level and doesn’t raid or inspect quarters without suspicion.

So the fact that she has the light means that she must not be suspected, at least not yet. CASS’ trust assessment is satisfied instead on surveilling the common areas of her quarters, which, along with their ship-wide network of informants, surveillance devices and undoubtedly uses a computerized analysis of it all to assign an anti-progressive risk index to every individual on board.

Her bedroom, supposedly, the only other area in her quarters without surveillance, she doesn’t trust. Usually, the CASS uses cameras that are noticeable, but there’s absolutely no reason to use conspicuous cameras unless for the deterrence factor and as a decoy to help hide the real unseen cameras and create a false sense of privacy in areas, like her bedroom.

Even though she grew up, spending her entire life with a camera on her, still it made her uneasy when she thought about it, dressing and undressing in her bedroom, knowing that “probably” someone was watching. Her bathroom has become her sanctuary, especially with the addition of the reading light, and the reading light is supposed to work better in small spaces.

Keeping the reading light and the reader in a sack safe in the back of the bathroom cabinet, along with some occasionally used sex toys was convenient and gave her reason and an excuse for a good soak and relaxing. Though she had to be careful not to spend too much time in her sanctuary to avoid raising the suspicion of the CASS and result in an “inspection.”

She hadn’t dared to pick up the reader in a long time, the effects it had on her from the last time scared her. Reading Or’Gn’s history was like looking into a portal to the future and most of what she saw portended death and devastation.

Dadr’Ba had exited the harsh domain of interstellar space and its corrosive nothingness and was experiencing the “atmosphere” of O’M’s solar system. O’M’s sun doesn’t look like just another star anymore and is clearly recognizable as a guide star brighter and more inviting than all the others. The parallel to the first Touch of God and the Touch of God ceremony that they all experienced is undeniable.

She picked up the reader, this time; she’s prepared; she and her team have learned much about the O’Mi’s. She still prefers her pet name for the people that live there, and the name the Dadr’Ba’s would have possibly called themselves once settled.

Chn’Gi picked the reader up off the stand near the tub. She wasn’t worried anymore about the risk of getting it damp or wet; the thing is over a thousand years old and in all that time must have survived much worse than Chn’Gi’s tub. 

She began to look for the parallel goodness between Dadr’Ba’s past and that of the O’Mi’s and what the O’Mi’s are going through. Her goal is to craft an argument for peaceful coexistence with the O’Mi’s. Properly managed, there’s plenty of room on O’M for everyone.

There she had to stop herself, “properly managed” for proper management there has to be a method of management, control, monitoring, and enforcement. The O’Mi’s of aren’t there yet, they’re not a really “bad” people, there are some indications of hope and goodness. But they’re not ready or capable of “proper management” of themselves let alone the planet.

Can the O’Mi’s be taught? Or, as the CA has advocated, in some of its infomercials, accept “management?” Even Dadr’Ba’s people resist the CA’s management coupled with CASS’ enforcement. How can the O’Mi’s be expected to?

The CA has given hints that preparations are being made to handle the “O’Mi problem” but even at her security clearance level they’re hidden, special access required, and need to know. She knew nothing more than the average U’Te or Kr about the CA’s plans. All Chn’Gi knows about the CA’s plans are what the CA sends out with its infomercials, documentaries and Vr’Chm depictions of O’M.

Everything that the CA and CASS are revealing, much under the auspices of Chn’Gi’s team slant perspectives of O’Mi’s as an aggressive, dirty, barbaric, evil cancer, squeezing all the goodness and life out of the planet.

Frustrated, Chn’Gi set the reader aside and once again plunged her head under the water wondering how long she could hold her breath.

The beach was pretty crowded in spite of being so far from the settlement. The buildings and the people near them appeared quite small.

They were trying to invent a game, one that involves the waves and sand, but doesn’t give an advantage to either the U’Te or the Mi’Nr. Su’Zi and Tn’Ya were arguing about how many shells should be needed to be collected behind the waves to win. P’Ko, watching the two argue, thinking that there couldn’t be a more childish thing in the world.

His favorite thing was to swim and to float; there’s few swimming pools on Dadr’Ba and no large ones, and nothing with scenery or marine life. In most places on Dadr’Ba, swimming for enjoyment is impossible, nobody has a bath tub, and the public baths and pools are crowded. The other places you can float on Dadr’Ba, near the core and the counter rotating, or more accurately described non-rotating observation decks, are work areas, used for monitoring Dadr’Ba’s progress, obstacle detection and whose observation decks are crowded with tourists.

Swimming in O’Ms massive ocean, even Vr’Chm, P’Ko found exhilarating, like floating in weightless space on the counter rotating observation decks of Dadr’Ba, but without the crowd and with more control and nothing can compare to the marine life, updated with the latest imagery from O’M it’s breathtakingly beautiful and awe-inspiring.

The security provided by the CA Settlement Defense Force, a subdivision of the newly created O’M World Management Office, itself, a subdivision of the CASS, had done an excellent job of controlling the threat from the alien barbarians. The settlement perimeter walls are visible in the distance and further still P’Ko’s well-trained eyes could make out the outer perimeter wall with its automated guard post/surveillance towers linked to a rapid response force of soldiers.

Ever since Dadr’Ba entered the solar system, heralded by the detection of the solar wind and the accompanying celebration, a marked change in attitude came over Dadr’Ba. Everyone was happy, excited in spite of the extra work necessitated by the loss of the crew members to Dadr’Ka. The engine output was increased, and the slight resistance of the solar wind helped to counter the gravity pushing them towards the sun.

This system like most others contains a good number of planets, some gas giants, which Dadr’Ba will use for gravitational braking. A high priority is to maintain “Stealth Mode” and when close enough, stay as close to the opposite side of the sun from O’M as possible to reduce the change of detection by the aliens.

By this time, they’ve developed capabilities that could detect and threaten Dadr’Ba. The advertised plan is to achieve orbit at a safe distance. Then to make non-threatening slow, deliberate, conscious contact, followed by diplomatic relations, negotiate space for a settlement. Then, hopefully, begin to teach these aliens how to manage the planet better.

Retirements had stopped decades ago, and the CA was faced with a gap in its graduate/apprentice pipeline. Classroom sizes had to be reduced.

The departure of Dadr’Ka allowed for the granting of birthing rights to those that had lost their parents, even though their children might not be full crew members by the time they arrived at O’M.

Slowly Dadr’Ba’s crew will come back to full strength, not that it would benefit the overall mission, but the life and lifestyle aboard Dadr’Ba needs to be maintained, and it did no practical harm. Dadr’Ba still had adequate resources, the ship and its machines that were lost to Dadr’Ka would slowly be replaced. With O’M so near and the crew staying motivated, efficiency and production remain at all-time highs.

It had crossed both P’Ko’s and Su’Zi mind, though they never discussed it, that with Su’Zi’s mom and both P’Ko’s parents having left, forever, not dead or retired, but never to be seen or heard from again. Left the question of being eligible for birthing. Many other couples applied for and were granted birthing rights, but P’Ko and Su’Zi both felt they weren’t ready, they weren’t mated, and though there was no reason for the CA to refuse, they never applied.

For P’Ko and Su’Zi, the excitement of coming O’M, its sun becoming distinguishable to the naked eye overshadowed thoughts of birthing and children.

Whispers among Dadr’Ba’s crew began to spread about how things are going to work once they’re settled at O’M.

The Biologicals would be thawed, and the slow process of recovering and adopting Or’Gn’s biosphere to O’M would begin.

It could take centuries, perhaps millennia to work out and combine (replacement or introduction would only work only on a sterile planet) Or’Gn and O’M’s biosphere, but there were plenty of people looking forward to and training to meet the challenge. Many of them educators, what with the reduction of students, jumped at the chance to participate in such a momentous undertaking.

The Church engaged early. It realized that arrival at O’M would change everything for them. Foreseeing this day, the Church dusted off old plans and began mentioning how natural death is going replace retirement. Birthing will become biological, and organic “children” will become little people instead of big childlike people, all very wondrous and amazing to the crew of Dadr’Ba. The existing crew will be honored and for the first time be allowed to retire, without departing, to enjoy a life of leisure activity, rewarded by society until disease, accident, misfortune or eventual fatal fatigue takes them.

Dadr’Ba’s deceleration continued and adjustments to its trajectory for gravity assisted deceleration and orbital capture progressed flawlessly. Dadr’Ba was able to conduct successful gravitational braking maneuvers using gas giant planets in the outer solar system, the reverse of some of the maneuvers Dadr’Ba accomplished almost two thousand years ago when it exited the Or’Gn system.

There was a celebration when they had slowed enough to guarantee solar system capture. It was an irreversible milestone, like when Dadr’Ba passed the point of no return when there wasn’t enough fuel to get back to Or’Gn.

There were others less significant milestones, for example, when they passed the point when there wasn’t enough fuel to divert to another destination. Today Dadr’Ba became a permanent resident of the O’M system.

Now O’M was just months away. It would be visible to the naked eye had Dadr’Ba not approached from the far side of the sun.

Engine thrust and the fuel mining necessary to support the load is at near maximum capacity. The regulation of Dadr’Ba’s internal temperature in interstellar space had become routine, but now they were beginning to feel the warmth of a sun. Operating a spaceship composed mostly of ice surrounding a massive fusion rocket engine, hotter than the surface of a sun, started to become a concern.

The solution Dadr’Ba’s engineers worked out was to operate the standard cooling at full performance and to flow excess heat in the form of hot gasses out the engine exhaust. This solution increased the ejectorate mass, improving the performance of the engine while at the same time getting rid of the heat that would have threatened Dadr’Ba’s structural integrity. The addition of partially processed waste water to the ejectorate created a shadowing cloud that completed the solar protective measures.

The result became a massive plume in front of and bent around Dadr’Ba. Dadr’Ba looked, at least in the visible light bands in standard resolution, like what it started its life as. A comet. A careful examination at high resolution or at other than visible wavelengths would quickly show something unnatural about Dadr’Ba. Analysis of its speed and trajectory over several weeks would remove all doubt that Dadr’Ba was anything but natural.

The drawback to these cooling measures was that the efficiency of the ejectorate reclamation, using Dadr’Ba’s magnetic field to draw the positive ions around Dadr’Ba and back into its intake suffered. Dadr’Ba began losing many times more mass than it did while operating in interstellar space. It was worth the risk, they have the mass to spare and losing mass increases the efficiency of the engine, the engineers calculated that even with the increased fuel consumption and loss of potentially useable fuel and water, Dadr’Ba possessed enough reserves to safely reach O’M.

Dadr’Ba was getting close to what it deemed the habitable zone. The morale of the crew at an all-time high. Excitement grew as they passed the system’s outer planets, coming close, using them as gravitation brakes.

Images of the system’s planets were produced, and the crew wondered at their beauty. Each view hammering home the fact that they’re very soon going to reach O’M.

After almost two thousand years and nearly a hundred light years of travel, most people having worked through light years of travel, to be within light minutes of O’M meant that they were as good as there.

Then.

The forward-looking collision avoidance sensors detected an oddly shaped object, near Dadr’Ba’s path on an intercept course. Further analysis showed that it was under power and guided, it must be a probe.

Chn’Gi and the CASS teams studying the aliens discovered that they had been sending probes out to the outer planets. Dadr’Ba went to a heightened level of alert; they didn’t want to be detected, at least not yet. The probes’ diminutive size, in comparison to Dadr’Ba, along Dadr’Ba’s significantly reduced speed would make the probe an easy target for Dadr’Ba’s debris clearing systems.

This was an unexpected development and the Commander, and his advisors had trouble deciding how to handle the situation. Chn’Gi advised against taking any action, to let them think Dadr’Ba was a natural comet. Chi’Yo and the CASS analysts wanted it destroyed, even at the risk of altering the aliens to the nature of Dadr’Ba’s existence. It was decided to prepare, wait and see, and try to detect and analyze the communications coming from the probe. Whereby providing valuable information about the aliens and their operations.

As the probe got closer, it altered its course in such a way as to make a flyby. The tension aboard Dadr’Ba relaxed a little. But just as it seemed the probe would pass innocently by perhaps only taking some pictures. Dadr’Ba engineers frantically attempted to interfere remotely, jamming the probe’s ability to collect imagery and send data back to its controllers. Image and signal analysts sought to discover the nature of the probe using their own imagers and analysis of the probes electromagnetic emissions.

The probe performed a trajectory maneuver and began to spin itself and shortly after began to deploy some secondary probes on a slow velocity intercept course with Dadr’Ba.

The alarm in the collision avoidance control room sounded, and the collision avoidance systems automatically began targeting the objects. Dadr’Ba had allowed the probe to get too close, and its collision avoidance systems had trouble targeting the objects. The systems were intended and designed to intercept objects more directly in front of Dadr’Ba.

There was also a slight delay in the chain of command, the first echelon of the chain, was uncertain what to do. They attempted to get the collision avoidance systems targeted while waiting for a command decision; they didn’t have to wait long. Commander Chi’Yo gave the order to eliminate the objects, including the mother probe, that at this time was roughly parallel to Dadr’Ba passing quickly.

The collision avoidance system had just completed lock-on to the nearest of the objects with its powerful directed energy beam to vaporize it when it detonated. The nuclear blast blinded the electro-optical sensors and burned off much of the blanketing fog that surrounded Dadr’Ba protecting it from the heat of the sun. The intense radiation from the second blast, a specially designed nuclear device, designed to direct its energy, mostly in one direction, toward its target; only a few seconds later interacted with the surface of Dadr’Ba, blistering its surface. The third blast a few seconds after the last was the last, though it further blistering Dadr’Ba’s surface. The collision avoidance systems using the surviving electro-optical and radar systems were finally able to target and eliminate the remaining objects, including the mother probe/control module bus that delivered the devastation.

The nuclear blasts caused the explosive armor meteoroid shields nearest the blast at the front and back of Dadr’Ba to detonate. Fortunately, the shields were designed to prevent a chain reaction that would have caused all of the panels to detonate. But enough of the shields were damaged and detonated on one side of Dadr’Ba to off-balance it a little. That, along with the repeated blistering of one side of Dadr’Ba imparted a tiny bit of sideways momentum, enough to cause Dadr’Ba to become unbalanced.

Dadr’Ba’s spin, that gave its occupants a sense of gravity, a sense of up and down, began to deteriorate. Alarms sounded throughout Dadr’Ba and the fuel being pumped into Dadr’Ba fusion intake was automatically interrupted, but even without primary fuel. It took precious seconds for the fusion drive to snuff out. Sensors blinded or damaged by the second and third nuclear blast made it difficult to quickly assess the damage.

Dadr’Ba’s primary power blinked out and slowly and in a deliberate priority auxiliary power came online. Practiced, but never before used in real need, not since the Touch of God Event over eight hundred years ago.

Most of the casualties were among the Mi’Nr’s the nukes had tweaked Dadr’Ba enough that its superstructure cracked in several places, and some whole mining sections got evacuated out into space.

Some quick thinking engineers narrowly avoided catastrophe, sacrificing their lives in the process, manually overriding the electrostatic fusion beam control plates to keep the dying fusion reaction centered in the now off center Dadr’Ba, keeping the fusion reaction from blowing Dadr’Ba to bits.

Over a kilometer of the center core of Dadr’Ba had been overheated on one side, killing hundreds of engineers and technicians. The greatest loss of life was among the Mi’Nr’s, well over a thousand Mi’Nr’s operating in the lower zones died after the atmosphere they were breathing was sucked out into space from cracks in Dadr’Ba’s hull.

In all, over three thousand people lost their lives, more than one-fifth Dadr’Ba’s crew died in the first moments of the disastrous unprovoked attack, without retirement.

Dadr’Ba’s main engine was out of commission. Dadr’Ba’s now unbalanced spin slowly degraded into a cartwheel, Dadr’Ba’s superstructure barely able to keep from breaking into pieces. Their velocity too fast to achieve O’M orbit, they will fly by O’M and be whipped back out into a long period comet trajectory.